Bright House cable back online after software glitch

Published: Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 8:18 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, January 18, 2013 at 7:08 p.m.

DAYTONA BEACH -- Bright House cable customers who lost their cable to a software problem for 12 hours or more Thursday morning are back online, a company spokesman said.

"The boxes that were taking longer to reboot after the network performance upgrade was complete are now coming back online," said Donald Forbes, senior director of corporate communications for Bright House, in a statement issued at 2:15 p.m.

"We want customers to know we make enhancements to the network during the very early hours of the morning to avoid any negative customer impact and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience,” Forbes wrote.

He added that in limited cases customers may need to reboot their boxes by unplugging them, waiting a few seconds and then plugging them back in.

Some Bright House customers awoke to blackened screens on their televisions or messages saying "initializing software application" Thursday morning because of a software problem.

Representatives helping customers at the counter at the Daytona Beach office of the cable television company said people statewide with Scientific Atlanta or Cisco converter boxes had outages since 1 a.m.

Telephone lines to the cable company were overloaded as customers tried to learn more about the problem. The phone lines at Bright House were inoperable for several hours.

A representative in the Ormond Beach office said customers may request account credits after the problem is fixed.

The Ormond Beach office had 30 people in the lobby at 8 a.m. within a 10-minute span. The Daytona Beach office had about a dozen walk-ins at that time. Numerous customers walked in carrying their cable boxes and were immediately told what the technical issue was and left.

-- Staff writers Jeff Wilen and John Gallas contributed to this report.

<p>DAYTONA BEACH -- Bright House cable customers who lost their cable to a software problem for 12 hours or more Thursday morning are back online, a company spokesman said.</p><p>"The boxes that were taking longer to reboot after the network performance upgrade was complete are now coming back online," said Donald Forbes, senior director of corporate communications for Bright House, in a statement issued at 2:15 p.m. </p><p>"We want customers to know we make enhancements to the network during the very early hours of the morning to avoid any negative customer impact and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience,” Forbes wrote. </p><p>He added that in limited cases customers may need to reboot their boxes by unplugging them, waiting a few seconds and then plugging them back in.</p><p>Some Bright House customers awoke to blackened screens on their televisions or messages saying "initializing software application" Thursday morning because of a software problem.</p><p>Representatives helping customers at the counter at the Daytona Beach office of the cable television company said people statewide with Scientific Atlanta or Cisco converter boxes had outages since 1 a.m. </p><p>Telephone lines to the cable company were overloaded as customers tried to learn more about the problem. The phone lines at Bright House were inoperable for several hours.</p><p>A representative in the Ormond Beach office said customers may request account credits after the problem is fixed.</p><p>The Ormond Beach office had 30 people in the lobby at 8 a.m. within a 10-minute span. The Daytona Beach office had about a dozen walk-ins at that time. Numerous customers walked in carrying their cable boxes and were immediately told what the technical issue was and left.</p><p><i>-- Staff writers Jeff Wilen and John Gallas contributed to this report.</i></p>